AnastasiaDate article in Fortune magazine

[Christianfilipinacom]

Fortune Magazine reporter just revealed AnastasiaDate's annual revenue, part of it thanks to our own Winston! How does it feel to make history Winston?

http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2013/04/09/ ... SF_F_River

Here is our response:

https://christian-filipina.com/blog/for ... ride-boom/

[Winston]

I've never understood how Anastasia can prosper since their reputation online is pretty much all negative. That doesn't add up. Shouldn't their negative reputation have damaged them greatly? WTF?

I no longer run ads from Anastasia in the forum. I don't think anyone trusted them, so their ads here didn't help them much.

However, I am not an international dating policeman. That's not my job. My job is selling advertising space while writing about stuff I care about and am interested in. That's how I make my living online.

[Christianfilipinacom]

So what do you think, Winston, is Anastasia lying about their earnings? Take a look how they dominate a typical search results page. The four marked with A are all Anastasia sites. The circled ones are all pay-per-message sites.

[xiongmao]

I was one of their affiliates for a while, but I never made a cent.

I thought this was because guys had largely gotten wise to this "scam" by now, due in no small part to my writing about my experiences with Chinese pay-per-letter sites.

I think Anastasia is worth a look if you have plenty of money and want to go on one of their romance tours. But their sites are a ripoff.

Also the pay-per-letter sites seed Chinese Love Links and other sites with their ladies, but you know what - now I'm in China they never return my emails because it's too easy for me to get on a bus and visit them in person. Well that's if they actually exist, which they probably don't!!!

[Christianfilipinacom]

xiongmao Please join our affiliate program at CF and add us to your ad mix. We have several advantages over other affiliate programs:

1. We are honest
2. We have a generous payout for sales (men) and leads (women)
3. Your leads are tracked in our internal system, not via cookies
4. You receive a payout up to 2 months after the original lead joined.
5. You get paid even if the member pays over the phone or via paypal, check,m/o, etc.

Please try out our site and compare.

As for Anastasia, I was just talking with another former affiliate of theirs who said the same thing; apparently their affiliate program is like a revolving door of short term people who are attracted by a high per-sale payout offered that rarely if ever is actually credited to you.

[Winston]

So what do you think, Winston, is Anastasia lying about their earnings? Take a look how they dominate a typical search results page. The four marked with A are all Anastasia sites. The circled ones are all pay-per-message sites.

I don't know if they are lying. Almost everyone exaggerates though, especially if they have a vested interest in it. I don't know why Fortune is doing an article about Anastasia though. Why don't they pick a good company like yours to interview and assess instead?

But Anastasia is wealthy and doing well. I can't figure out why though, since everyone knows that they are a scam and they have a universally negative reputation. It's one of those many paradoxes in life.

I wasn't part of their affiliate program. They paid me a fixed sponsorship rate. When I told them that if they wanted more clicks on my site, they should fix their reputation or improve it, they went into denial and said that they had no problems with their reputation. Go figure. lol

Btw Christian Filipina, if you want to rank higher in Google, I'll put a text link directly to your site at the top of my home page. That will give you major points in search engine ranking. I'll do that on the next update.

[Christianfilipinacom]

Thanks for your support and flattering comments. Anastasia has been going through a major image push for over a year. The driver for this seems to be Mark Brooks, who is now officially their Chief Strategy Officer. Mr Brooks, who got his start with Cupic PLC (ugh) has now doubled down on the paint-job and any-publicity-is-good-publicity approach to fixing Anastasia's reputation.

The biggest obstacle, though, is Anastasia's own success at its business model thus far. They have build a 100 milllion dollar business that is extraordinarily profitable precisely because of the commissions that go to agencies (and indirectly, chat models/letter-answering staff). If they cleaned up their model, they would be less profitable. They can't have their cake and eat it too. Does Anastasia want to go from being a 100 million company to a 10 million company just so they can sleep better at night happy they brought sincere people together?